out significance,
which would place President McCall in an untenable position. If his
signature were valueless and without significance when appended to a
letter addressed to me, why not in other instances if the interests of
his corporation seemed to require such a disclaimer? Considering my
argument, would not such a confession have a pregnant bearing on the
proposition--is the "one man" honest, especially as I was equipped with
additional documents to offset further attempts on the part of the
insurance companies to show me up as a disappointed seeker after their
policies?

Here, specifically, are the details of my encounter with the
life-insurance institutions, and I pledge my word to my readers that
they constitute all the facts in this connection. They are well known to
the prominent men associated with the great companies whose duty it is
to keep track of just such transactions. Whoever knows by experience of
the incessant pursuit of business by the important insurance
corporations need not be told that a man in my position has had his
share of importuning by agents great and small. I have never sought life
insurance, for it has not appealed to me as an investment, but on three
separate occasions I have yielded to the persuasions of a friend
connected with one of the big institutions and have considered the
subject. The first time was in 1887, following a breakdown from
overwork. This illness my friend used as an argument to induce me to
take out insurance, and I went so far as to agree to submit to a private
medical examination by the leading physicians of his company for the
purpose of ascertaining if my breakdown, which for a brief time had left
a trace of paralysis in my left side, would bar me. This examination was
at my own expense, and it was expressly understood that, being private,
it should not constitute a record. The physician pronounced me a perfect
risk, but advised against going further inasmuch as a rigid rule of the
company precluded them from granting insurance to any one who had
suffered from this form of illness until seven years after the attack.
I was not disappointed except on account of my friend.

Five years later his solicitation was renewed and I was assured that the
officials of his company were so eager to have me that they would waive
the seven-year rule, which still had two years to run. This time I went
up before another medical examiner, and after the usual tests, was asked
the